Daily Prayer for All Seasons i The publisher gratefully acknowledges the permission granted to reproduce the copyright material in this book. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book. Unless otherwise noted, all Bible quotes are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations from THE MESSAGE. Copyright © by Eugene H. Peterson 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. © 2014 The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America All rights reserved. ISBN-13: 978-0-89869-923-4 (kivar) ISBN-13: 978-0-89869-924-1 (ebook) ISBN-13: 978-0-89869-931-9 (pbk.) ISBN-13: 978-0-89869-933-3 (deluxe) Church Publishing Incorporated 19 East 34th Street New York, New York 10016 www.churchpublishing.org ii Contents Introduction Advent 2 Praise 3 Discernment 6 Wisdom 9 Perseverance and Renewal 12 Love 14 Forgiveness 17 Trust 19 Watch Christmas 21 Praise 22 Discernment 25 Wisdom 28 Perseverance and Renewal 31 Love 34 Forgiveness 37 Trust 40 Watch Epiphany 42 Praise 43 Discernment 46 Wisdom 48 Perseverance and Renewal 51 Love 53 Forgiveness 56 Trust 59 Watch iii Lent 62 Praise 63 Discernment 66 Wisdom 69 Perseverance and Renewal 72 Love 74 Forgiveness 77 Trust 80 Watch Holy Week 82 Praise 83 Discernment 87 Wisdom 89 Perseverance and Renewal 92 Love 95 Forgiveness 98 Trust 100 Watch Easter 102 Praise 103 Discernment 106 Wisdom 108 Perseverance and Renewal 110 Love 113 Forgiveness 116 Trust 118 Watch iv Ordinary Time: Creation 120 Praise 121 Discernment 124 Wisdom 126 Perseverance and Renewal 129 Love 131 Forgiveness 134 Trust 136 Watch Ordinary Time: Rest 138 Praise 139 Discernment 142 Wisdom 145 Perseverance and Renewal 147 Love 149 Forgiveness 152 Trust 155 Watch Appendix 156 The Lord’s Prayer Notes 158 v vi Introduction “Let us pray.” Those words can be so embracing, so soothing. But there are times when they simply remind us that we don’t have time to pray — not the way we long to. We want to pray without ceasing, but we also want to repair that engine and train the puppy and plow the south 40 before sunset. Still, the call to prayer is strong. The call to pray throughout the day has sounded for centuries as a way to deepen our faith. Daily Prayer for All Seasons provides a holy — and wholly realistic — way to order our days, no matter how full they seem. Daily Prayer for All Seasons was compiled and written by a diverse team of people from all over the United States. We came together periodically over four years to create a set of prayers that acknowledge in their brevity both the need to pray and the short time we have to pray. The Daily Prayer for All Seasons team comprised people like you: we have jobs and families, groceries and gardens and ironing; subways to catch, doctors to see, and reports to write. We put these demands on the table. We never lost sight of those pressures on our time and energy as we plowed through wonderful resources for meditation and song, assembling the richest ones into a prayer book for all of us, clergy and laity, who think we’re too busy to pray. vii Background of Daily Prayer People in all kinds of religious traditions, including Judaism and Christianity, have been marking time with prayer for almost as long as we’ve had hours. “Praying the hours,” as it’s called, has always reminded us that God walks with us throughout each day; “praying the hours” is also a way that the community of faith comes together, whether we’re all in one place or scattered like raindrops. Praying at set hours links us, both to God and to all God’s people. We know this, and we are comforted. In The Episcopal Church, our Book of Common Prayer offers beautiful services for morning, noon, evening, and nighttime in a section called “The Daily Office” (pp. 35-146). Daily Prayer for All Seasons offers a variation on that theme, a shortened version, where a complete service covers one or two pages at most, thereby eliminating the need to shuffle prayer books and hymnals. Daily Prayer for All Seasons works for individuals, small groups, and/or congregations. This prayer book presents a variety of images of God by including inclusive and expansive language for and about God, and it presents a variety of words by including poetry, meditation and prayers from the broader community of faith. viii How to Use These Materials The church divides its calendar into periods called “seasons,” which track the events of Jesus’ birth, death and resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit to the Church. The seasons are Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week (the final week of Lent), and Easter, followed by what the church calls Ordinary Time; because Ordinary Time is the longest season in the church year, we crafted two sets of services for the summertime: Creation (spiritual growth) and Rest. The eight sets of seasonal prayers provide the outer structure of Daily Prayer for All Seasons. For the inner structure, each set of seasonal prayers falls into eight “hours,” which follows the pattern of Benedictine monks, who divided the day into a cycle of eight intervals, called “hours,” that effected a rhythm between work (labora) and prayer (ora). As a contemporary complement, the committee crafting Daily Prayer for All Seasons assigned a specific labor to each prayer “hour”: We named dawn as the time for praise; we designated starting the day as the time for discernment; later morning, wisdom; midday, perseverance and renewal; afternoon, love; evening, forgiveness; bedtime, trust; and midnight we named as the time to watch. Each hour has a name, which also dates back to Christian monastic history and which we printed in italics after the hour’s “work” name, for example, Praise (Lauds). ix Don’t be inhibited by the hours as we’ve labeled them. Maybe your day “starts” at the crack of noon or your bedtime comes after the night shift; maybe the end of your workday marks only the beginning of meetings for another part of your life. It’s all right to adjust the prayers to the day as you live it, no matter how topsy-turvy it seems. Adaptations for the prayers, lessons, meditations, and hymns may be made to suit the occasion. The questions that are provided for the meditations are only suggestions. They may be freely adapted, other questions may be used, or a period of silence may be kept. x Format for the Hours BASiC fORm (Praise, Watch): Written in first person and generally anticipated for private use. Entering and Going out (or Closing): the same simple, short call-and-response, which emphasizes the spiritual work of the hour Scripture: a short, easily memorized passage, related to both the time and the season meditation: a question or a prompt for spiritual reflection Prayer: a closing collect related to the hour and season Shorter HOuRS DuRiNG THE DAy (Wisdom, Perseverance and Renewal, Love, Trust): Intended for group use, may be adapted for individual use. These add the following to the basic form: Prayer: an opening collect, suited to time and season Praise: hymn, psalm, or canticle meditation: an inspirational quote precedes the prompt for reflection Prayers: responsive prayers of the people, with space for personal intercession and thanksgiving xi Lord’s Prayer: Versions of the prayer are omitted to allow for local traditions; if praying in a group, the leader may choose to specify the form of the prayer (old/new, short/ long, English/other language) to be used or encourage worshippers to pray in the language of the heart (versions of the Lord’s Prayer appear in the Appendix). LONGER HOuRS (Discernment, Forgiveness): Intended for group use, may be adapted for individual use. To the above, add the following: Discernment: affirmation forgiveness: confession and assurance of pardon (the latter allows for lay leadership of the hour whereas absolution requires a bishop or priest) The consultants who began this project in 2007 did so in prayer and with the hope that anyone — newcomer, stalwart, or someone in between — who wants to pray within the Christian tradition will be enriched by Daily Prayer for All Seasons. Devon Anderson, Mark Bozutti-Jones, Rebecca Clark, Joseph Farnes, Paul Fromberg, Paul Joo, Lizette Larson-Miller, Julia McCray-Goldsmith, Sam Dessórdi Leite, Ernesto Medina, Clay Morris, Elizabeth Muñoz, Ruth Meyers, Dan Prechtel, Cristina Rose Smith, Carol Wade, Julia Wakelee-Lynch, Louis Weil. With Gratitude, The Rev. Julia Wakelee-Lynch March 2011 Berkeley, California xii Advent The Christian calendar begins its new year not on January 1, but on the first Sunday of Advent — which is always four Sundays before Christmas (December 25) and the Sunday closest to St. Andrew’s Day (November 30). Our word “Advent” derives from the Latin Adventus, which means “coming,” and originally referred just to the coming of the feast of Christmas. But over time the season of Advent took on a double meaning. Today it refers both to the “first coming” of Jesus Christ in his birth at Christmas and to his “second coming” at the end of time.